Tools not working (Windows)

[GeoffH]

Hello

Whilst working through a batch of OOC  jpegs I came across something unusual happening that I don’t understand in the Photo Persona.

My normal work flow for these jpegs is

1.       Levels adjustment

2.       HSL adjustments

3.       Curves adjustment

4.       Cropping

I then move on to any other corrections required (usually dodging, burning and inpainting) using the tools on the left side of the screen. Here’s where things started to get unusual though.

The tools that use brushes would work. The brush cursor would appear on the screen but nothing would change under the cursor for dodging and burning. The Inpaint tool would appear but without the red highlight and the dialog box would pop up but nothing would happen.

Similarly other tools would not function e.g. The perspective tool grid would appear but the corners could not be dragged

I then reversed the order of operations and used the tools first and then the Studio adjustments and it all worked. However if I then tried to use another tool after using the studio adjustments they would not work. I have tried various file sizes and it seems to have no effect. My OOC jpegs are 8Mb.

I monitored my computer activity through Task Manager and OpenHarwareMonitor and itshowed no flat lining or excessive resource use. I was not using any other peripheral devices other than mouse. Using my Wacom tablet seemed to make no difference.

Also I have noted that sometimes the RGB values would not update as the cursor moved when the tools did not work.

None of this causes a crash although sometimes the program becomes unresponsive and I have to close it through task manager.

Computer Specs

AMD PhenomII II X4 965 3.4 GHz, 12 GB ram, AMD Radeon HD6800 1GB

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, build 1803

Affinity Photo 1.7.1.404

So is this a bug or something in my workflow?

[Dan C]

Hi GeoffH

Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

On 6/21/2019 at 8:11 AM, GeoffH said:

The brush cursor would appear on the screen but nothing would change under the cursor for dodging and burning. The Inpaint tool would appear but without the red highlight and the dialog box would pop up but nothing would happen.

This sounds as though one of your adjustment layers is selected, not your background image. Please make sure you have the correct layer selected and your Context Toolbar options for the tools (Flow, Opacity etc) are set correctly!

[GeoffH]

Thanks Dan C

Yes it was operator error as I later found. Your summary is correct I was not on the background layer. Coming from LR without layers so I have some things to relearn.

Thanks for your help